Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Car clubs and car share schemes are back in the news and all positive stuff too. As regular readers of my blog will know, they are subjects close to my heart.

At Budget Rent a Car, I introduced both and, in the case of car clubs, the Edinburgh City Car Club was the first commercial car club launched in the UK. It won a major environmental award ten years ago, a year after launch.

In 2008, there were over 64,000 car club members by year end, double the amount over the previous year. Now the Carplus annual survey reveals that growth continues to climb with membership last year breaking the 100,000 barrier.

There are now 46 car clubs spread up and down the country and Carplus, the national charity promoting car clubs, is keen to get more businesses on board. It claims quite rightly that by joining a car club, businesses can not only save money but can replace paying mileage allowances as well as tackling the grey fleet issue.

As a viable alternative to pool cars for organisations based in towns and cities, car clubs make eminent sense.

Recently, the Energy Saving Trust was highly critical of organisations, identifying a ‘green gap’ between green declarations and actions.

Becoming a member of a local car club can not only prove more cost-effective than running a car pool fleet but can also immediately boost an organisation’s green credentials and enhance its corporate social responsibility position.

Car clubs represent a perfect alternative to car ownership for city dwellers but also a green solution to city-based organisations.

Carplus is promoting car clubs as a cost effective route to a low carbon Britain. They are not the whole solution but they are certainly part of the solution.

Meanwhile, various technology providers are leaping on the car share bandwagon by providing web-based systems to manage car share schemes. Again, back in my Budget days, we worked with car share solution provider, Vipre on just such a basis. That was over ten years ago. Not much has really changed in the meantime. What really needs to change is the mind-set of employees.

At a time when everyone is trying to save money, now is the ideal time to encourage more employees duplicating regular car journeys to car share with fellow employees. It’s not rocket science, can lead to greater bonding between employees improving overall staff morale in the process.

You can bet that if there is little impetus from the current economic environment then the introduction of workplace parking levies may prove the catalyst for change. With the Association of British Insurers advising that vehicle insurance policies will not be invalidated as long as money only changes hands to cover costs, there really is no excuse for more employers to encourage their staff to car share.

Again, another opportunity to bolster CSR credentials.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

With all the talk of the sheer boredom of last Sunday’s opening F1 race, it’s still worth looking at some of the positives.

Besides the return of seven-time World Champion, Michael Schumacher, the renaissance of Ferrari, the fielding of the two most recent World Champions – both British – in one team, there is much that can be taken away in the form of management lessons.

Firstly, let’s look at brand reputations. Michael Schumacher is undoubtedly a great driver but his past dubious driving tactics have tarnished his reputation. Will his comeback tarnish his reputation further? The jury is still out but, last weekend, he was on average half a second slower than his young teammate, Nico Rosberg, who has yet to score his first win. Have no doubt however that every lap he spent behind him will be carefully analysed and worked on. While I think he will find his original race pace, more worrying still was his continued attitude. To be so indirectly dismissive of Fernando Alonso’s two titles by writing off his last two seasons as being unrepresentative of his talent because he was so tired beggar’s belief. Humility remains his weakest point. Brand reputations take time to build but can be destroyed overnight – just ask Gerald Ratner!

By comparison, the attitudes of his former and current boss, Ross Brawn, and his former teammate Felipe Massa are in sharp contrast. The way the former acknowledged the huge contribution his sacked colleagues made to the Brawn effort over the 2008/09 winter, immediately after securing both the driver’s and constructor’s titles in Brazil, demonstrated what a big man the ‘Big Bear’ is! Felipe Massa’s conduct immediately after losing the world championship driver’s title the year before, seconds after winning the last race of the season, has to be the benchmark for all professional sportsmen and women. His competitive return to Grand Prix racing after his horrific accident last year was indeed a highlight of last weekend. Being nice and behaving with professionalism and dignity in all circumstances still has its place. Nice people don’t have to be losers!

There was a lot of comment on the three new teams – some good, some bad. The Lotus F1 team, while not the fastest in qualifying, beaten by Glock in the Virgin Racing car, saw both cars finish, thus fulfilling its initial objective and at the same time being the ‘best of the rest’. While Lotus, Virgin and Campos, now called Hispania, made the grid in Bahrain, the USF1 team significantly failed to make it, and may never see the light of day. Although the first of the entrants to be confirmed for 2010, and way ahead at the time of their new rivals, they did not build a car and complained of the tightness of deadlines. Lack of sufficient sponsorship didn’t help the cause either but Campos managed to resolve that one. By contrast, the Lotus F1 team did not start on the design of its car until September, the last to do so. By employing Mike Gascoyne as technical chief, who in turn attracted many from the defunct Toyota team and past colleagues at Renault and Jordan, Malaysian boss Tony Fernandes played a masterstroke. Gascoyne said Lotus would be a professional team, it would turn up, it would be ready and it would be reliable. Clearly outlined objectives fulfilled. Now, it can work on the performance side and home in on some of the slower established teams. So what’s the lesson here? Several, really. First, you need to identify and recruit key talent and let them get on with it. ‘Impossible’ and ‘never’ are not words in the business language. From scratch, in six months, Lotus F1 designed and built two cars that finished their first Grand Prix. There just is no substitute for application and hard work. Whinging, as did USF1, is just not an option. As a famous advertising slogan goes, just do it!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Black holes simply will not go away – ask any scientist! Indeed those I keep ranting on about (see blogs dated Jan 14 and Feb 18) just continually grow in number and size. Of course, those I write about are the very ones that jar your spine ever more frequently and might end up smashing your vehicle suspension too. Potholes are on the increase and so are the costs to you and me, as already predicted.

It has been reported that already one council has increased its council tax by more than originally planned just to cover its increased road maintenance bill. On an average council tax bill, this will equate to £5 per household.

Local councils, through their Local Government Association, have been lobbying the Department for Transport for an extra £100m to cover emergency repairs.

As previously reported, it is estimated that there are 1.6 million potholes on the 246,000 miles of the UK’s secondary roads, with an increase of 700,000 in the past two years alone and still rising.

One pothole every 120 yards resulted in compensation claims last year of £47m for injury and damage plus an estimated £240 repair bill for the average driver.

The AA itself estimates that insurance claims directly resulting from pothole damage has increased fourfold in the past two years. Last month, 2,400 vehicle claims were submitted alone.

To make a successful claim against a local council, drivers must have reported the problem first. The trouble is that now so numerous are the potholes that councils are failing to meet their own average targets of making a temporary repair within 48 hours.

Until last month, apparently the worst road in the UK was Priory Road in Hull which had 319 potholes over a 400-yard stretch.

Given that frightening statistic it might be worth the likes of Potholes UK running national, county and local council league tables of the ten worst reported roads.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance reckons the average repair cost of filling in a pothole to be £70 and it will take 15 years to fix at a cost of £10bn.

Plenty of time then to get those league tables up and running, and naming and shaming!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Glad to see government is getting heavy on penalties on a number of fronts.

First was the news last month that the Sentencing Guidelines Council has issued penalty guidelines relating to those found guilty under the UK Corporate Manslaughter (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and Corporate Homicide (Scotland) Act or Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Under the former, a work-related road death will result in an organisation being fined rarely less than half a million pounds and more likely several million pounds.

Under the latter, the fine will be seldom less than £100,000 and more likely several hundred thousand pounds.

All we need now is for relevant prosecutions to take place and heavy fines imposed for the message on duty of care to be really driven home.

Being stuck in a traffic jam is never fun but when the roadworks overrun their due finish date, drivers have every reason to fume behind the wheel. However, up to now there has been little real incentive for contractors to get on with the job and finish on time. Certainly, not in financial penalty terms.

That’s all about to change with those contractors flagrantly breaching their obligations facing a tenfold increase in penalties from a daily charge of £2,500 to a whopping £25,000 per day.

According to the government, road works cost the economy £4.2 billion per year. Many of these are the result of utility companies digging up the road and government is keen for them to finish on time or face the consequences. They won’t even be allowed to pass on the cost of any fines on to consumers either.

At the same time, local councils are being given extra powers to charge utility companies for inspecting the progress and completion of road works. Again, with the chance of being charged for additional inspections, following poor rectification work, perhaps we’ll start seeing better road surface repairs with proper sealing and matching of surface levels.

Currently, in addition to having to zigzag between potholes, we have to contend with bouncing over uneven road surfaces as the result of poor road repairs.

With councils hard pressed to find emergency funds for ‘winter’ road repairs, perhaps utility companies should face the costs of resurfacing the whole road in which they have dug a channel. That way at least all road users would be guaranteed an even surface on which to travel and councils’ road repair bills would be reduced. After all, the utility companies have plenty of money in their own coffers!